category: Top Stories

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Is ADAS The Edge?
By Ann Mutschler - 16 May, 2019 - Comments: 0

Debate is brewing over whether ADAS applications fall on the edge, or if they are better viewed squarely within the context of the automotive camp. There is more to this discussion than just semantics. The edge represents a huge greenfield opportunity for electronics of all sorts, and companies from the mobile market and from the cloud are both rushing to stake their claim. At this point the... » read more

Incremental System Verification
By Brian Bailey - 16 May, 2019 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss the implications of having an executable specification that drives verification with Hagai Arbel, chief executive officer for VTool; Adnan Hamid, chief executive office for Breker Verification; Mark Olen, product marketing manager for Mentor, a Siemens Business; Jim Hogan, managing partner of Vista Ventures; Sharon Rosenberg, senior solutions archit... » read more

Can The Hardware Supply Chain Remain Secure?
By Andy Patrizio - 15 May, 2019 - Comments: 2

Malware in computers has been a reality since the 1990s, but lately the focus has shifted to hardware. So far, the semiconductor industry has been lucky because well-publicized threats were either limited or unproven. But sooner or later, luck runs out. Last year saw two significant incidents that shook people’s faith in the integrity of hardware security. The first was the Meltdown/Spectr... » read more

Chiplet Momentum Builds, Despite Tradeoffs
By Brian Bailey - 13 May, 2019 - Comments: 0

Chip design is a series of tradeoffs. Some are technical, others are related to cost, competitive features or legal restrictions. But with the nascent 'chiplet' market, many of the established balance points are significantly altered, depending on market segments and ecosystem readiness. Chiplets provide an alternative mechanism for integrating intellectual property (IP) blocks into a semico... » read more

The Growing Uncertainty Of Sign-Off At 7/5nm
By Ann Mutschler - 09 May, 2019 - Comments: 3

Having enough confidence in designs to sign off prior to manufacturing is becoming far more difficult at 7/5nm. It is taking longer due to increasing transistor density, thinner gate oxides, and many more power-related operations that can disrupt signal integrity and impact reliability.  For many years, designers have performed design rule checks as part of physical verification of the desi... » read more

The Limits Of Energy Harvesting
By Ed Sperling and Kevin Fogarty - 09 May, 2019 - Comments: 4

Energy harvesting, once considered an inexpensive alternative to low-power design and a way of achieving nearly unlimited power in mobile devices, has settled down to more modest expectations. This approach to generating energy through a variety of means—from solar to motion to ambient RF and even pH differences between soil and trees—has been proven to work. The problem is that it doesn... » read more

Raising The Abstraction Level For Power
By Brian Bailey - 09 May, 2019 - Comments: 0

Power-aware design is still a relatively new concern for many semiconductor products, and since inception it has changed several times and in different ways. Initially people were concerned about peak power. Today, they care about peak, total energy, thermal and other effects. The industry has tried several abstractions ranging from system-level analysis, which promised to swamp implementati... » read more

EUV Mask Gaps And Issues
By Mark LaPedus - 08 May, 2019 - Comments: 1

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography and photomask technologies with Emily Gallagher, principal member of the technical staff at Imec; Harry Levinson, principal at HJL Lithography; Chris Spence, vice president of advanced technology development at ASML; Banqiu Wu, senior director of process development at Applied Materials; and Aki Fujimura, chief ... » read more

Challenges In Making And Testing STT-MRAM
By Mark LaPedus - 07 May, 2019 - Comments: 1

Several chipmakers are ramping up a next-generation memory type called STT-MRAM, but there are still an assortment of manufacturing and test challenges for current and future devices. STT-MRAM, or spin-transfer torque MRAM, is attractive and gaining steam because it combines the attributes of several conventional memory types in a single device. In the works for years, STT-MRAM features the ... » read more

5G Heats Up Base Stations
By Kevin Fogarty - 07 May, 2019 - Comments: 4

Before 5G can be deployed commercially on a large scale, engineers have to solve some stubborn problems—including how to make a hot technology a whole lot cooler. 5G-capable modem chipsets are already on the market from Qualcomm, Samsung, Huawei, MediaTek, Intel and Apple, with some 5G service (LTE-Advanced/LTE-Advanced Pro) available in the U.S. But still mostly missing from the 5G equati... » read more

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